The Mill Is Peppered With Problems

The peppermill that resides on our kitchen table was on its last legs, so my wife bought me a new one for Christmas. It seemed reasonably well made, had an adjustment for how fine it ground the pepper, and even had the grinder at the top so it didnít leave a mess wherever it sat. I was a little concerned that the grinding surfaces were plastic, but Iíve learned over the years that well-chosen polymers donít necessarily mean cheap. A couple of days later, it stopped grinding -- OK, maybe it was cheap after all.

Now that I had two barely functional peppermills, I did what any engineer with four kids would do -- I set them aside for some time when I could figure out what was going on. A couple of months later, having exhausted the supply of pre-ground pepper in the house, the time had come for a design review. I carefully disassembled the peppermill and examined its components. It was set up as a ratcheting design, where the grinding rotor (white) was rotated by engaging teeth on a driver (black square).

A close-up look at the ratcheting surfaces of the peppermill.

The square driver was inside a square recess, which was driven by the outside of the mill, held by the user. A curved disk spring pressed the square driver against the grinder. The teeth that engage between the driver and grinder were shaped such that they would engage solidly in one direction, but float up and over each other in the other direction, providing a ratcheting action so that an oscillating rotation of the peppermill body by the user would create a continuous rotation of the grinding surface. The diagnosis was obvious: the spring was not strong enough, allowing the mating teeth to float over one another in both directions, and not turning the grinding surfaces at all.

The first attempt at a solution was to bend the spring, to cause a slightly greater engagement force. After reassembling the peppermill, I found that its behavior had not changed. Only brief contemplation was required to realize that the ratcheting action was a feature I could live without. So I once again dismantled it, and filled the square recess the driver floats in with hot-melt glue, making for a very stiff spring indeed. It no longer ratchets, but it does grind peppercorns just fine. I wonder if the grinding surfaces were touching initially, causing me to damage the form on the engaging teeth on first use, or if there are untold numbers of inoperable peppermills floating around out there. I retained the old one with the metal teeth as a backup in case the plastic grinding surfaces donít last; it will be harder to repair because of accumulated damage from combined fatigue (use) and impact (dropped too many times) damage.

This entry was submitted by James Sebastian and edited by Jennifer Campbell.

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Tool_maker, I agree. If we accept garbage products then that's what they will sell. The cheaper they can make them the better for them. A 2 cent part might make the difference in a good or bad product, but they don't care. My mom does it all the time....she sees something for cheap...buys it, then wonders why it breaks days later. I doubt there is a solution to this.

It quit working a few days later so you set it aside until you could work on it. Did you write a letter to the manufacturer? Probably not. So the bean counter who chose profit over quality has won. If everyone who bought one of these inferior products took them back to the retailer soon they would disappear from inventory and would end up in Big Lots or Dollar Tree store until the supply was exhausted.

I keep repeating the same mantra: If we accept garbage any CEO who is doing right by the stockholders will maximize profits by producing and selling the cheapest product he can. When the item was bought and kept, even though it was of poor quality. you confirmed that attitude. In the future, I hope you take deffective items back and demand a refund.

We use a pepper grinder that we inherited from my mother in law. It has been used regularly for at least four decades. It works great. If I tried to take it apart to analyze its superior performance, my wife would kill me.

Last year, we received as a gift a very nice looking pepper grinder that did not work out of the box. It looked good, had the screw top adjustment for grind, and either gave out nothing or locked up on the first few tries. On the next turn, the mechanism kind of just fell out of the top of the grinder. It went in the trash. We went back to old reliable and use it daily.

I suspect we might have picked it up at Sur La Table in Walnut Creek...

It's plastic, and it's a combo Salt Grinder/Pepper Grinder. It has two levers at the top that you squeeze to dispense. It has a little S in the window on the side when it's grinding Salt, and a P in the window when grinding pepper. You just rotate the levers around to change it.

My wife has Rheumatoid Arthritis, and she has very little hand strength. Most rotary grinders are too difficult for her to use. She has trouble unscrewing the cap off a bottled water.

The levers are very easy to use, and it dispenses from the bottom. We've had the thing for years, and it's still working like new... I've refilled it several times now, and it's been a really great little addition. The wife has been having me put Sea Salt in it... She thinks it tastes better, although the only real difference that I can see is it doesn't have iodide added to it... (We get plenty of salt with iodide, in any case...)

The pepper bottles with their own grinders I've seen have a pressed on cap in order to discourage re-filling. For a "throw away" item, they supply a fairly good grinder. Now any one clever enough should be able to pull the cap off in order to refill. Just be careful you don't break the glass bottle, gash a finger severing a tendon, and end up with a $ 10K hospital bill. Risk versus reward study anyone?

Good engineers make wrong assumptions all the time. Your last three posts in quick succession, 4 sentences total, certainly suggests an impulsiveness on your part, (No edit buttons?) not to mention a willingness to make an assumption about the author, and anyone else.

The author wasn't really concerned about the grinding surfaces, nor did he say anything that suggested he even looked closely at them. No brand name even, so I couldn't look it up. If he's wrong, no big. If I'm wrong, no big. If you're wrong, well, probably someone elses fault, right?

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